Assignment 5

Expert Interview

Goal: To manage the pictures shot by a wildlife photographer (Kalyan Verma) on a computer after a photo expedition

Task 1

To submit a picture of the Lion-tailed Macaque of South India to National Geographic
  • Fetch all the pictures taken in South India that have the Lion-Tailed Macaque in them
    • Try to recollect where and when the Macaque was shot
    • Browsing through the locations (directories on the computer) where the pictures were stored
    • Repeat the following tasks for every subset of pictures that were found
  • From the pictures that were found, compare and choose the one that needs to be submitted
    • Edit the picture to match the requirement
    • Choose a previously edited version (SRB Color space, 300dpi, 2700px on larger side
  • Make a note of the submission for the record

Task 2

To submit a picture of a person from the Soliga Tribe in BR Hills, Karnataka, India to an online publishing company
  • Fetch all pictures taken in BR Hills, Karnataka, India (from the last 5 trips over the last 2 years)
    • Browse through the directories where pictures from BR Hills are stored
    • Browse through the date-wise organization of the different trips to BR Hills (directories again)
    • Repeat the following steps for every subset of pictures that were found
  • From these pictures find the ones with people in them
    • Manually check every picture to see if there are people in them
    • Manually check every picture to see if there are N people in them (depending on the requirement from the publishing company, they may require 1 person, or a family of 4 people)
  • From the people shots, find the ones that are oriented as a portrait
    • Manually check or use photo management software feature to filter only portrait
  • Compare the photos and choose one photo to submit
    • Compare subject matter – Attire, Location (House / In the wild), State (Performing a task – Hunting / Cooking, Resting)
    • Compare composition – Lighting, Off-centered subject, Crop
  • From the final set of pictures, submit a version as per the requirements of the publishing company
    • Edit the picture to match the requirement
    • Choose a previously edited version (Maybe a Color picture, Resolution of 150dpi, 1500 px tall)
  • Make a note of the submission for the record

Problems in the Task

  • Searching by manual browsing is straining (by scrolling through multiple pages of folders of photographs). We could have an interface that consists of a geographical map, and a search bar that returns results in a time-space continuum (details in the next stage of the project)

  • Versioning of photographs is done manually. Each version of a photograph is stored and shown as a new photograph. Instead a storyboard of edits could be shown. A user can select an intermediate state of a photograph in its history of edits and choose to continue to edit the photograph to match the requirements of the publisher

  • Every photograph looks the same (not talking about the contents of a photograph) probably because of which searching by browsing through contents of a photograph (by looking at thumbnails) is straining. Metadata of the photograph (like location and time) should also contribute to the way a photograph looks (an old photo could actually look old!) so the user can distinguish the photos easily

  • Keeping track of the usage of the photos is done manually, maybe in a separate logbook. A tracking system could pop-up as soon as a photo is exported

Task 3

To import photos from a memory card / disk at the end of a day/trip shoot
  • Choose where to import the photos from – card/disk
  • Select photos that need to be imported, or select all photos
    • Browse the contents of the card/disk and select photos manually (Ctrl + Select or Shift + Select) or when using importing software select photos by checking off checkboxes
  • Copy the photos into a folder by following organization conventions that have been used before (folder names and hierarchy), or let the import software handle where to import the photos

Problems in the Task

  • Handling repeats or multiple versions of a subject when shooting in continuous / drive mode. Pile the repeats together and show them as one photograph

  • Tagging – Location, Subject. Tag photos by location when importing. Need to think of a good way to tag subjects while importing

  • Folder organization may not be optimal for searching for a photo later, or for managing different versions of a photo. Let the management software abstract the internal storage of photographs. The UI aids in the search


Entities

Photographs
  • Defining Characteristics
    • Title
    • Semantic Meta Info
    • Location
    • Time & Date
  • Important Characteristics
    • Orientation – Landscape / Portrait
    • Height
    • Width
    • Resolution
    • Version – Online / Print
    • Storyboard Info
  • The Rest
    • Size (Disk Space)
    • Color space
    • Copyright

Semantic Meta Info
  • Defining Characteristics
    • Subject
    • Description
    • Keywords / Tags


Location
  • Defining Characteristics
    • Longitude
    • Latitude
    • City
    • State
    • Country
    • Continent


Storyboard Info
  • Defining Characteristics
    • Details of edits
    • Times of respective edits